Section 1

1. To make the existence and coherent structure of this Universe
depend upon automatic activity and upon chance is against all good
sense.

Such a notion could be entertained only where there is neither
intelligence nor even ordinary perception; and reason enough has
been urged against it, though none is really necessary.

But there is still the question as to the process by which the
individual things of this sphere have come into being, how they were
made.

Some of them seem so undesirable as to cast doubts upon a
Universal Providence; and we find, on the one hand, the denial of
any controlling power, on the other the belief that the Kosmos is
the work of an evil creator.

This matter must be examined through and through from the very
first principles. We may, however, omit for the present any
consideration of the particular providence, that beforehand decision
which accomplishes or holds things in abeyance to some good purpose
and gives or withholds in our own regard: when we have
established the
Universal Providence which we affirm, we can link the secondary with
it.

Of course the belief that after a certain lapse of time a Kosmos
previously non-existent came into being would imply a
foreseeing and a
reasoned plan on the part of God providing for the production of the
Universe and securing all possible perfection in it- a guidance and
partial providence, therefore, such as is indicated. But
since we hold
the eternal existence of the Universe, the utter absence of a
beginning to it, we are forced, in sound and sequent reasoning, to
explain the providence ruling in the Universe as a universal
consonance with the divine Intelligence to which the Kosmos is
subsequent not in time but in the fact of derivation, in the
fact that
the Divine Intelligence, preceding it in Kind, is its cause as being
the Archetype and Model which it merely images, the primal by which,
from all eternity, it has its existence and subsistence.

The relationship may be presented thus:

The authentic and primal Kosmos is the Being of the Intellectual
Principle and of the Veritable Existent. This contains within itself
no spatial distinction, and has none of the feebleness of division,
and even its parts bring no incompleteness to it since here the
individual is not severed from the entire. In this Nature inheres
all life and all intellect, a life living and having intellection as
one act within a unity: every part that it gives forth is a
whole; all
its content is its very own, for there is here no separation of
thing from thing, no part standing in isolated existence estranged
from the rest, and therefore nowhere is there any wronging of any
other, any opposition. Everywhere one and complete, it is at rest
throughout and shows difference at no point; it does not
make over any
of its content into any new form; there can be no reason for
changing what is everywhere perfect.

Why should Reason elaborate yet another Reason, or Intelligence
another Intelligence? An indwelling power of making things is in the
character of a being not at all points as it should be but making,
moving, by reason of some failure in quality. Those whose nature is
all blessedness have no more to do than to repose in
themselves and be
their being.

A widespread activity is dangerous to those who must go out from
themselves to act. But such is the blessedness of this Being that in
its very non-action it magnificently operates and in its
self-dwelling
it produces mightily.